Present Genus

Famous quotes containing the words present and/or genus:

    “It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.”
    —Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)

    “Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)